Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2024 goes to Ferdia Lennon

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2024 has been awarded to Ferdia Lennon for his “exquisitely unique and funny debut novel” Glorious Exploits (Fig Tree). 

The award is the UK’s longest-running prize for comic fiction and celebrates the funniest novel of the past 12 months that best evokes the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly timed comic prose. This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the award. 

The winner was chosen from a shortlist of seven very different titles—ranging from steampunk fantasy to romantic comedy, with a bit of time travel thrown in—spanning across comic fiction writing, from jokes, farce and satire, to spiced wit and wry humour.  

The announcement was made this evening at a ceremony held at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace in Central London. Lennon receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, the complete set of the Everyman’s Library P G Wodehouse collection, and a pig named after his winning book. 

Described by Roddy Doyle as “a very special, very clever, very entertaining novel” and by Douglas Stuart as “bold and totally unexpected”, Glorious Exploits is set in 412 BC, when Athens’ invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. 

Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. 

Lennon was born and raised in Dublin to an Irish mother and Libyan father. He holds a BA in History and Classics from University College Dublin and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. His short stories have appeared in publications such as the Irish Times and the Stinging Fly.

In 2019 and 2021, he received a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. After spending many years in Paris, he now lives in Norwich with his wife and son. Glorious Exploits is his debut novel and recently also won the Waterstones Debut Novel Prize.

Lennon said: “I was stunned and utterly delighted to get the news. This is a prize I have followed for years, and so many books I love have won or been shortlisted for it. I’m truly honoured that the judges gave me the nod among such a brilliant shortlist. For Samuel Beckett, the act of writing was the placing of stains on silence and nothingness. For me, it has always been more of a means to secure pig naming rights, so I am very pleased indeed.” 

Peter Florence, chair of the judges, commented: “What a great year this has been. We were delighted with the shortlist and we’re thrilled with the winner. Glorious Exploits is a delightful mash of contemporary Irish comedy and classical Athenian tragedy. It’s a caper, a buddy story, and it had us all laughing and cheering Ferdia Lennon’s comic spirit." 

Victoria Carfantan, director of Champagne Bollinger, Group Bollinger UK and Global Partnerships, added: “We are very proud of our long-standing relationship supporting the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It is such an important award celebrating some of the most talented names in the genre and I am delighted to extend my congratulations to Ferdia Lennon and his novel Glorious Exploits as this year’s winner.”